


tied a rag across my eyes

by mildlydiscouraging



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil is Mostly Human, Childhood Memories, Gen, Headcanon, Immortality, Meta, Mild Horror, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, The Faceless Old Woman is Protective and Indifferent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:22:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3940093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildlydiscouraging/pseuds/mildlydiscouraging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>she remembers. she remembers most everything. but sometimes she does not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tied a rag across my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> it's taken a couple of years but i think i'm finally narrowing in on my cecil headcanon. of course, as i say that, this will all be jossed by the next episode. i- i just looked up jossed to see if it was spelled right... i didn't know it wasn't a real word... oh god...

She remembers. She remembers most everything. But sometimes she does not.

She does not remember a time before she was called The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home. Well, she _does_ , she remembers every second of her abnormal existence, but she does not remember what she was called before that. She must have had a name at one point, but whatever it was is lost to the grinding sands of time.

She remembers the boy though; small, dark-skinned, with wide eyes and an even wider mouth. She had always hoped he would grow into that mouth, but knew it wasn't meant to be. She remembers watching on as he scaled the sides of playground equipment, watching on as he was covered head to toe in brightly colored band-aids, watching on as he went to school and was too loud for the other children, watching on as he spent small nights awake in terror of never belonging.

She remembers watching. She remembers little else.

•••

She remembers the boy before and after. Before when he questioned everything, where nothing was safe from his scrutinizing gaze. He tugs on the hoods of the figures wandering around town, tries to sneak out of the house when the street cleaners tear their warpaths. Uncertain teachers feared him and Librarian catchers were constantly irritated by him. She did not care either way, but if he knocked on the wrong houses she was there to lock the doors to keep him more safe than usual.

She remembers parents leaving angry voicemails and dictionaries scribbled through when the right words were in the wrong place. The boy asks more questions than even she could answer, if she ever felt inclined to do so. The boy stays up late at night to watch the mysterious lights that have drifted in above the canyon, writing stacks and stacks of journals full of observations and inquiries. He calls it science, but we all know that's not true. He talks above everything and nothing is sacred and nowhere is safe from his questions. He was inquisitive.

She also remembers when that changed.

•••

She remembers the day when the curtains tear and the mirrors go fuzzy, when the small boy latches onto the cassette in his hands and the light bulbs blow out. There are very few days she remembers quite as readily as that one. Her memory is impeccable where it is intact.

She remembers when she ceased being just "she" and became The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home, another day that is less spotted and cracking than others. The boy is alone and dark. To be more exact, he is in the dark, the darkest dark he could find on the floor of a wardrobe at three in the morning. She knows no concept of time, so she can't be for certain, but the alarm clock outside by the bed seems to be a pretty good indicator. The boy breathes in and out in sync with the pulsing glow beneath his palms. "I know you're there," he says, and there is no doubt he is talking to her. "I don't know what to call you, but I know you're always there and I just wanted to say hello for once." He introduces his small self and asks her age and she does not know how to explain to such a small human the inescapable complexity of time, particularly time when applied to a non-corporeal being that knows every person's every moment. She says she is ".....old," and he coins the phrase. She remembers the small rush of _belong_ that comes with the name.

She does not remember the sound of creaking boards and crackling film.

She remembers the glow.

•••

She does not remember when she stopped watching other people. She does not remember when she decided to spend every moment watching the boy. She remembers when he comes home one day and tells the empty kitchen all about his day at school and does not notice how there is not another soul in the house. She is afraid for him, certainly. She knows how talking to walls can drive a person mad. Not from experience or anything. Someone she watched a few years ago had done the same after his family had been sent to the Abandoned Mine Shaft outside of town. It's not quite the same, if she's being honest, but it's very hard to find exactly the right metaphor for everything. You can't expect people to always be and say perfect things.

She remembers what happened the last time she did that. She does not remember the outcome, but she remembers the event.

•••

She remembers the other boys. She does not bother to remember their names, but she knows them all the same. She remembers the boy, _her_ boy (in that the one she knew best. She knew the others, of course, had watched their homes as well, but it just was not the same), deflecting questions of parent and siblings and many-tiered disappearing acts. There is an outburst, louder than more, too loud, and there is one boy who leaves, and then the other, and then it is just the boy.

She remembers leaving books about monsters by his bed and tangling up his sheets around him while he sleeps.

She does not read him a bedtime story or tuck him in, no, but she remembers their faces and names and she does not ever really forget.

•••

"Do you remember where you came from?"

She does not. She explains it was a long time ago, whatever it was, and even though she cannot forget, she does not remember. Time is a difficult concept to grasp, even with all the practice she has had, but she can only guess it was centuries ago. He must mistake her uncertainty for distress as he says, "That's okay. I don't remember where I came from either. I thought I did, and I must've once, but I don't know anymore." She knows that he did. She doesn't know how she knows but she does and she cannot tell him.

He doesn't know and she does not remember. It is enough for them.

•••

She remembers his changes. When the lights get shut off one month and he builds a fortress of mattresses to fend off the shadows leaking in the windows until someone turns them back on. When he grows taller and his ankles are bare with every too-short pair of pants. When he passes some arbitrary threshold and has a gilded piece of paper to hang on his walls. When the radio station starts consuming his time instead of his books and the house becomes emptier still. When he comes home one day with hair just shy of too short and blonder than could be seen as natural by anyone. When all the fake confidence comes down and the lights are turned off by hand this time and she can only send some helpful messages flying across the room in the form of shattered plates. When he wakes and the plate shards are in an arrow pointing to the empty fridge and the dusty living room.

She remembers and does not say more.

•••

She remembers his trip across the sea as much as one can remember something they've never experienced. She remembers the stories he tells of it and she remembers watching on as he packs up as many small reminders of his home as could fit in that tiny bag. It wouldn't do any good, she knows, but she is beginning to remember the more human feelings of nostalgia and loss. She wonders how she could forget. She wonders why she would want to remember.

She does not remember when she stops calling him the boy and starts calling him the man. She does not deal with change very well.

She remembers reorganizing the bookshelves several times the day he leaves. First by feeling, next by expiration date, by use and by color, by favorites of his. _Good Omens_ , _Fahrenheit 451_ ,  _House of Leaves_ , _1984_ ,  _Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe_ , _A Clockwork Orange_ ,  _Unseen Academicals_ , _Brave New World_ , all heavily censored by the municipal government and carefully restored over years of tedious work. The few times she gets through to him, he thinks she is his mother. She lets him believe. She had been to the sea once, and beyond. She must have had a mother. Probably. She must have come from someone.

She remembers the stories. She always does.

•••

She remembers the storm. Few storms are strident enough to ingrain themselves in her memory, but this one was. The strange howling noises were deafening when heard from every place in the town at once and the sand would have gotten into her eyes if she had any. The man who is not  _the_ man is where he should not be. Or at least, she assumes so. She does not know where he should be, nor who he is in the first place. She does not know something and she is... uncomfortable. The portal is consuming the sand at the base of it, as well as a few sand cats. Normally sand cats are only found in the Sahara, but she is not surprised to find them here. Nothing surprises her anymore. Not even the light-consuming darkness of the gap in space and time.

She remembers the way the hum of the storm reverberates through streets and windows. The buzzing is pervasive and slices through the finest thoughts that are scattered in the corner of every person's head. Soon enough the vibrations end and your thoughts will be just as blissfully empty as they are meant to be. Soon your time will be measured in "days since" something you do not understand.

Soon you will forget, but she will remember.

•••

She even remembers the day the scientist came to town, inconspicuous as it is in every way. The mirror in the bathroom had been creaking just enough to warrant a good strong pull to tear it off the wall and she was grinding them into a fine luminescent dust when the radio buzzed to life in the corner. She hears his voice like any other day and she turns back to her powder. The walls will look so much better once she finds that old can of blue paint. So much better. She remembers hearing something about headstones and cemeteries and reminds herself to trample the garden again later. She hears something of love and that is what makes her leave. (Well, she doesn't leave per say. She is always everywhere, she just refocuses her attention elsewhere in the town.)

She remembers seeing nothing special about the man in the lab coat. But then again, she does not always see everything. Nor does she remember it.

•••

He knows. He does not know everything, but he does know some. He knows that she has always been watching, just out of the corner of his eye. She has seen every moment of every life, but for some reason she pays most attention to his. He isn't grateful, per say, but it is nice.

He knows that very few things make sense. He knows that he once had a mother and a brother and maybe more. He knows they are gone now, he knows he still has a sister. He does not know why, but he tries not to question it too much.

He learns that sometimes things do not have to make sense. Sometimes time stops working, sometimes he has memories that are not his own. He learns very quickly that people do not always stay and maybe holds on too tightly to the ones that do because of that. He holds on to those he loves and only at night does he dare to hope they feel just as vice-like.

He sees what he knows he should not. He sees secrets that are not municipally approved. He sees beyond the mysterious lights. He sees the mountains. He sees her, yes, and she is not as faceless nor as old as he first thought. You'd think she would look older with time, but maybe just one of them is moving backwards. Maybe we are all moving backwards, slipping away into the dim and he knows it doesn't make sense, but he's learned that that can be true. He sees what she tells him, even not in words, and he tells them all.

He speaks, more than anything. Stories that are true, stories that are false, stories that no one knows and therefore cannot truly say are one way or another. He speaks to empty walls and patient ears and oscillating waves of air and sea and they listen like they should. He speaks of what she remembers, although he doesn't know if they are things he tells him in his sleep or truths he's learned by osmosis. He knows it's probably both.

He knows and she remembers and that is all they can ask for.

**Author's Note:**

> the weather today is "[monster](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHMuYGycbvc)" by magic man. we strongly urge you listen to this song, and this band, and all the ghosts of your past mistakes that haunt you as you try to fall asleep at night.
> 
> the tense of this fic changes between past and present fairly frequently on purpose. not because the author bad at writing. time is weird.
> 
> the faceless old woman is not nearly as faceless as she seems. nor is she old. well, she _is_ old, just not in the ways you can understand. she knows what you will and will not understand. trust her. also cecil is indian. and a legacy native of night vale. geography is weird too.
> 
> sand cats are fascinating creatures and the only kind of cat to live primarily in desert habitats. learn more about sand cats [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand_cat). who knows, maybe one day you'll know more than the faceless old woman. probably not, but you never know!
> 
> the list of books on cecil's bookshelves are all favorite of the author's and are definite recommendations of theirs. while the copies cecil owns are approved by the city council, the author urges you to find unaltered copies. for no particular reason, of course. they are definitely not full of conspiracies and dystopian governments and hilarious puns. definitely not.
> 
> visit the author's tumblr at [moonfullofstars](http://moonfullofstars.tumblr.com). please, visit them. please. pl


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